Key takeaways · 6
- To find small-cap stocks with elite relative strength, filter for a small tradeable float and a top-of-field strength rank at once. The terminal command
screen rs>95 float<40m | profiledid exactly that on the 2026-07-08 close and returned 88 names. floatis a stock's tradeable share count, not its shares outstanding. A small float (float<40mis fewer than 40 million shares) means thin supply, so a given amount of buying pushes price further and faster.rs>95is a relative filter: it keeps the top 5% of the field by relative-strength percentile. That is a ranked position against the universe, not an absolute measure of thrust.- Power is the absolute companion to that relative rank. All 88 names sit at RS 95+, but only 18 of them (20.5%) also clear Power 90, so the cohort is relatively strong yet absolutely thin.
- The
| profileconsumer reports what the cohort is made of in one screen: on this close it clustered in Health Care (31.8%) and Technology (29.5%), Pharmaceutical Products (25%), and the Episodic Pivot (28.4%) and YTD AVWAP Test (26.1%) setups. - Swap the consumer for
| sort pwrto rank the same 88 names by absolute Power. Everything is end-of-day and point-in-time: one night's reading describes the close, it is not a signal.
What a small-float RS leader actually is
To find small-cap stocks with elite relative strength, filter the universe down to a small tradeable share count and a top-of-field strength rank, then look at what the survivors are made of instead of scrolling them one at a time. In the tickerstance terminal that is one line, screen rs>95 float<40m | profile, and on the 2026-07-08 close it returned 88 names and broke them into sector, industry, setup, strength, and trend buckets. Those two filters belong together, and the composition report tells you more than the list would.
The appeal of a thin float is old and mechanical. William O'Neil folded it into the "S" of CANSLIM, supply and demand: a stock with fewer shares available to trade needs less buying to move, because there is less stock standing in the way of the bid. Kristjan Kullamägi hunts the same edge in small and mid-cap momentum names, where a genuine catalyst meeting a thin float produces the sharp, vertical advances that a mega-cap simply cannot make. The small float is the amplifier. Relative strength is how you find the names where the amplifier is already turned on.
The problem is that "small cap" and "strong" are easy to say and hard to see together. A broker screener will give you a list of small companies, or a list of strong ones, but reading the two conditions at once and then understanding what the resulting group has in common is where the work is. That is the job the terminal does in a single line.
The question, made measurable: float and relative strength
Float is the number of shares actually free to trade, which is shares outstanding minus the stock locked up in insider and restricted hands. It is not market cap and it is not volume. A company can have a large market cap and still float only a sliver of its stock, and that sliver is what sets the supply side of price. When float is small, thin supply meets demand and price has to travel further to find sellers, so the same dollar of buying produces a bigger move. In the terminal, float<40m keeps names with fewer than 40 million tradeable shares. The m suffix means millions.
Relative strength is the other half of the filter, and it measures something different from what most people assume. It is not RSI, and it is not a raw return. It is a percentile rank of a stock against the rest of the universe by relative return, on a 0-to-99 scale. rs>95 keeps the names ranked in the top 5% of the field. Because it is a rank, it is inherently relative: a stock at RS 96 is stronger than 96% of the universe right now, which is a statement about its position in the pecking order, not a fixed threshold of thrust.
That distinction is the whole lesson of this cohort, so it is worth holding onto. The terminal also carries an absolute strength reading called Power, anchored to a fixed scale rather than to the field. A name can rank high on relative strength while its absolute Power stays modest, and a small-float group is exactly where that gap tends to open up. The screen finds the relatively strong names. The profile shows how many of them are absolutely strong too.
The 88-name profile
Type screen rs>95 float<40m | profile and the terminal applies both filters, then hands the survivors to the profile consumer instead of printing a list. Space-separated predicates are ANDed automatically, so this reads as "top 5% relative strength and float under 40 million." On the 2026-07-08 close, 88 names cleared both, and the profile grouped them by sector, industry, setup, strength bucket, and Weinstein stage, each row showing a count and the cohort share.
Read the buckets top to bottom. By sector the cohort leans hard into two groups: Health Care at 28 names (31.8%) and Technology at 26 (29.5%), together nearly two-thirds of the field. Drill to industry and the concentration sharpens, with Pharmaceutical Products alone at 22 names (25%). By setup, the Episodic Pivot leads at 25 names (28.4%) and the YTD AVWAP Test follows at 23 (26.1%), so a large share of these small-float leaders are sitting on a recognizable structure rather than floating in space. By trend, Stage 2 uptrends account for 36 names (40.9%). That is the composition of the cohort, read off a single screen.
This is why | profile beats scrolling a list of 88 tickers. A list tells you the names; it does not tell you that a quarter of them are pharmaceutical companies, or that the Episodic Pivot is doing most of the structural work. The profile answers "what is this cohort made of," which is the question that turns a screen result into a read on where small-float strength is actually concentrated tonight.
screen rs>95 float<40m | profile on the 2026-07-08 close. 88 names clear both filters; every one sits at RS 95+, but only 18 (20.5%) also clear Power 90, and the cohort clusters in Health Care and Pharmaceutical Products.Relative rank versus absolute Power
The strength block of the profile is where the small-float cohort tells on itself. Every one of the 88 names sits at RS 95+, which is 100% of the group by construction, since that was the filter. But the deeper strength buckets thin out fast. Classical RS 90+ holds 48 names (54.5%), Leadership 90+ holds 33 (37.5%), and Power 90+ holds only 18 (20.5%). So four out of five names in this elite-RS cohort do not clear a high Power reading.
That is not a contradiction; it is the difference between a rank and a level. Relative strength is a percentile against the field, so in a neutral tape a small-float name can rank in the top 5% by simply outrunning a soft universe. Power is anchored to a fixed scale, so it does not inflate when the field around a stock goes quiet. The 2026-07-08 close carried a Stance of 46, Neutral, and in that kind of tape the gap widens: plenty of names are relatively strong, far fewer are absolutely strong. A small-float RS cohort is, almost by nature, relatively strong yet absolutely thin.
The practical read is to treat RS and Power as two questions, not one score. RS 95+ answers "is this name near the front of the field." Power 90+ answers "is the field itself worth being at the front of." The 18 names that clear both are a different animal from the 70 that clear only the rank, and the profile puts that split on a single line instead of leaving you to infer it name by name.
Of the 88 names at RS 95+, only 18 (20.5%) also clear Power 90. Relative strength is a rank against the field; Power is an absolute level, and far fewer names carry both.
The leaderboard form: | sort pwr
When you want the names rather than the shape, swap the consumer. screen rs>95 float<40m | sort pwr runs the identical filter and prints the same 88 names as a ranked table, ordered by Power descending, so the absolutely strongest float-constrained leaders rise to the top. On this close the head of the list ran BBGI, QTTB, CLYM, STAK, WOLF, BAND, ATEX, and DWSN, each carrying an RS in the high 90s and a Power in the 90s.
Sorting by Power surfaces absolute thrust, and it also surfaces the caution that comes with a thin float. BBGI topped the Power ranking at RS 99 and Power 99, yet it traded roughly 769 thousand dollars of volume that day and sat about 21% below its high. That is the small float working in both directions: the same thin supply that sharpens a move also means a name can top an absolute-strength ranking while being barely liquid enough to trade. | profile tells you what the cohort is; | sort pwr tells you which names, and reading the dollar-volume column keeps the ranking honest.
Composition
Typed live: screen rs>95 float<40m | profile builds the 88-name composition; swap the last word for | sort pwr to rank the same names by Power.
The liquidity a thin float imposes
The screen is end-of-day. Every filter, every bucket, and every Power reading is computed from the last close and stamped with it. The 88-name reading describes the 2026-07-08 session, and one night's composition can shift as new closes arrive. A screen you run after Friday's close is a description of the week that ended, not a forecast of Monday.
A thin float cuts both ways. The same small supply that produces sharp advances produces sharp reversals and wide spreads, and a name that tops the Power ranking on 769 thousand dollars of volume is not the same instrument as a liquid large cap at the same rank. The dollar-volume column is there precisely so a thin, illiquid name at the top of the board does not get mistaken for a tradeable one. Small float is an amplifier, and amplifiers do not care which direction they amplify.
And the terminal reports conditions; it does not tell you what to do about them. "88 small-float names cleared RS 95, and 18 of them also cleared Power 90" is a fact about the tape. Whether any of that matters for your own book depends on your strategy, your timeframe, and your tolerance for the liquidity a thin float imposes, and the terminal leaves that judgment to you. It reports where the strength is; the trade is yours.
Where to profile the cohort
The screen, the profile composition, and the Power-sorted leaderboard are all in the tickerstance terminal, where a typed line puts a question to the tape. The interactive terminal is a Pro feature at $28 a month, grandfathered, and everything it computes is end-of-day and point-in-time honest, with no "here is what to buy" attached. It ranks and profiles the field; the decision stays yours.
Open the terminal and type screen rs>95 float<40m | profile to see tonight's composition, then screen rs>95 float<40m | sort pwr to rank the same names by absolute Power. Reading the two together is the point: the profile tells you what a small-float RS cohort is made of, and the Power sort tells you how few of those names are strong on their own terms.
Frequently asked questions
What is a stock's float and why does it matter for small caps?
Float is the number of shares actually available to trade, which is shares outstanding minus the stock locked up in insider and restricted hands. A small float means thin supply, so when demand arrives price has to travel further to find sellers, and a small-float name can move a long way on modest volume. William O'Neil folded this into the "S" of CANSLIM: supply and demand. In the tickerstance terminal, float<40m keeps names with fewer than 40 million tradeable shares.
How do I screen for small-cap stocks with high relative strength?
In the tickerstance terminal, screen rs>95 float<40m combines the two filters. Space-separated predicates are ANDed, so this keeps names in the top 5% of relative strength and with a float under 40 million shares. Add | profile to see the cohort's composition or | sort pwr to rank the survivors by absolute Power. On the 2026-07-08 close it returned 88 names.
What does rs>95 mean?
RS is a relative-strength percentile from 0 to 99. rs>95 keeps the names ranked in the top 5% of the universe by relative return. It is a ranking against the field, so a rank of 95 means "stronger than 95% of the universe right now," not a fixed threshold of price thrust. That absolute reading is Power, a separate column in the terminal.
What is the difference between relative strength and Power?
Relative strength is a percentile rank against the rest of the universe, so it can be high simply because a name is falling less, or rising more, than a soft field around it. Power is an absolute reading anchored to a fixed scale, so it does not inflate when the field weakens. In the small-float cohort on the 2026-07-08 close, all 88 names cleared RS 95 but only 18 cleared Power 90, which shows the two are measuring different things.
Why do so few high-RS small caps also have high Power?
Because relative strength is a rank and Power is not. A small-float name can rank in the top 5% of the field on relative return while its absolute thrust stays modest, especially in a neutral tape (the 2026-07-08 Stance was 46, Neutral). On that close, 88 names cleared RS 95, 48 (54.5%) cleared Classical RS 90, but only 18 (20.5%) cleared Power 90. The cohort is relatively strong and absolutely thin.
What does the profile command show?
| profile turns a screen result into a composition report. Instead of a list of tickers, it groups the cohort by sector, industry, setup, strength bucket, and Weinstein stage, with a count and a cohort share for each. On the 2026-07-08 close the 88 small-float leaders clustered in Health Care (28, 31.8%) and Technology (26, 29.5%), with Pharmaceutical Products the top industry (22, 25%) and the Episodic Pivot the top setup (25, 28.4%).
Is the screen real-time?
No. The tickerstance terminal is end-of-day. Every filter and every profile bucket is computed from the last close and stamped with it. The 88-name reading describes the 2026-07-08 session, not the next one, and one night's composition can shift as new closes come in.